


A Call That Reaches Far and Wide, Dispelling the Mires of Another Time

by TigressJade



Series: Spangled Stars and Altered Stripes AU's [2]
Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Agent Carter S1E8 - Valediction, Agent Carter Spoilers, BAMP Howard Stark, Captain America: The Winter Soldier Spoilers, Drabble, F/F, Howard has a few unrequited loves, Howard has regrets, M/M, Making it up to the people you care about, Mentiones and spoilers from Agent Carter Episode 8 - Valediction, Multi, The SSR, references to Agent Carter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-23
Updated: 2015-03-23
Packaged: 2018-03-19 06:43:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3600156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TigressJade/pseuds/TigressJade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Drabble) Howard Stark arrives at the Hydra base in time to convince Captain America to redirect the plane back toward safe territory.  When the war ends Steve Rogers is drawn back to Brooklyn and immerses himself in it's ghosts.  He finds out the truth of the SSR's compartmental nature and his remaining friendship with Peggy tenses.  Howard suffers as a result of his own wartime technological advances and redirects his guilt toward fixing the lives of the people he cares about, to try and reaffirm his humanity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Call That Reaches Far and Wide, Dispelling the Mires of Another Time

**Author's Note:**

> This is something I came up with after mainlining a few different Captain America fandom fics, and to be honest, I can't help but think that part of Howard Stark's bitterness was about the things he couldn't fix back in the 40s. The mistakes he made that he couldn't reverse, well mostly couldn't, as evidenced in Agent Carter. (Ironically the ones involving Steve and Bucky were completely fixable if only he'd known a.) they were alive and b.) where to find them.)
> 
> Well, enjoy!

Howard arrives at the Hydra base in time to convince Steve to agree to land the plane and allow the SSR to dismantle the Valkyrie’s arsenal post-flight. He’s able to argue Captain America out of sacrificing himself for what Howard knows is a mission of guilt and uncontrolled displacement. It’s the reason Steve is able to join the Commandos on VE Day a few months later in a newly repaired bar in London for a well-earned drink.

But…Howard knows, that same guilt and steeled emptiness is the reason Steve can barely let Peggy kiss him without turning away, without nearly wincing from an intense feeling of guilt. It’s the reason Steve doesn’t meet Peggy at the end of the isle like she’d hoped he would.

No, Peggy continues to work for the SSR and Steve returns to Brooklyn, his Brooklyn, takes care of Bucky Barnes family, lives on his back pay and earnings from small bit jobs, and works his days away with charitable organizations.

What’s left of Steve’s friendship with Peggy nearly ends when Howard slips him the letters, the ones where Bucky Barnes admits to a declaration Steve dared only make in writing. The newest letter, hidden by the SSR to preserve their golden boy, contains an admission from James Buchanan Barnes left for Steve to find _after_ the mission to retrieve Zola admitting his requited feelings for his best friend, and extracted from Captain America’s tent before his return. Peggy’s guilt over it nearly edged out her desire to continue to pursue what she and Steve could have together, only to find out that despite keeping that last letter a secret, that final missive of Barnes words, Steve didn’t choose her anyway…chose to live in Brooklyn amidst the Barnes family, amidst the ghost of his best friend.

When Ivchenko nearly forces Howard to drop a payload of Midnight Oil on Times Square, it’s Steve who appears on the radio to convince him to turn back, just as Howard did a year before. Howard’s butler Edwin Jarvis having just enough peace of mind to collect Steve during his mad dash with the SSR to Howard’s private hanger.

“Rogers…Steve. I can find him. I just need to fly low near the ravine…if you can survive extreme temperatures in the air with little to no blockers, why can’t he?” Howard rambled as he flew dangerously close to Times Square.

“Stark…Howard, who are you-” Steve called back in a confused tone over the speaking tube.

“Barnes, Steve, Barnes. I can get him back for you. It’s the only thing I couldn’t do, for you, for Peggy, for the boys. I couldn’t bring him home for you then, but I can do it now.”

“If you’re-if you’re right then Stark, I’d like to be with you when you try” Steve answered. “You can’t go off half-cocked and try to find him. If anyone’s to blame it’s me for not reaching farther when I had the chance.”

“Rogers, I can-”

“No, Stark. You can’t land a plane in that ravine and you can’t find Bucky without a plan for getting him out” Steve reiterated, his words slowly driving Howard out of his trance.

“Your call, Cap. Just don’t give up on him yet, the world needs you and I’ve realized that we can’t truly have you without him.”

Steve smiled sadly and switched microphones to inform Jarvis of Howard’s agreement to stand down.

It’s nearly a decade before Howard is able to make good on his promise. The ravine in Austria is searched for Bucky’s remains and combed for any traces of their prior retrieval. Howard’s searchers are able to pinpoint evidence of a large company of soldiers having crossed the lower partition of the ravine on foot and Howard surmises their motives were less than honorable when coupled with the absence of Sergeant Barnes body from where it should have inevitably stayed.

It proves to Howard once and for all that Bucky Barnes had survived the fall, because no one, not even Hydra, wants the frozen a frozen corpse to study, even one of Arnim Zola’s former lab rats.

Howard keeps track of Leviathan and other Russian Intelligence agencies through less than charitable means and finds that he isn’t averse to killing a few double agents just to keep in the clear. He doesn’t tell Steve about this, about how in doing this Howard can prove to himself that he’s a good man, so he can finally wash away the words Ivchenko used to twist his own mind, his own words, against him.

Howard keeps his promise to Captain America by eventually giving the man known as the Winter Soldier to him in a villa in France on a silver platter in 1960. After keeping Barnes in near seclusion for days while Howard reconfigured his prosthetic left arm into something that couldn’t lead his handlers back to him or somehow poison and or detonate Bucky for being compromised by the “enemy”, Howard lets him alone in a house with Steve after a quick introduction and quick but quiet exit on Howard’s part.

Stark could only stand about three seconds of Steve and Barnes tearful embrace before making his escape to have a bottle of scotch in his lab.

It’s the same thing he did with Peggy really when he gave her that house to keep with that nice little Italian girl from the Automat.

Never let it be said that Howard Stark didn’t know how to treat those he loved. They just weren’t interested in falling into his arms necessarily, and he could live with that, if it meant he was fixing the world for them, counteracting his mistakes by encouraging them to do good for the world.

He felt it when the Commandos each gave him a salute, Dugan being the first, after being allowed to visit Barnes at the chateau, along with Bucky’s family. The truth of Barnes’ retrieval remained a carefully guarded secret, as did the rasping coils of Hydra’s dying breaths as Howard squeezed the life out of the remaining cells and forced Zola to live out the rest of his days sewing socks and marking primitive star charts in the Yukon alongside the local indigent population.

It would not be the last time that Howard took Edwin Jarvis’ advice on the best way to slowly sever the chords of his enemies remaining power, nor the first.


End file.
